Most Useful Pregnancy Products

When you first discover you're pregnant, you may wonder what products are out there to help you with any pregnancy symptoms or challenges you may face. Lucky for you, there are hundreds of helpful and useful products out there to help you get through the nine months of pregnancy.

There are products that help with:

• questions and answers
• morning sickness
• sleeping
• clothing issues
• stretch marks
• backaches, and the list goes on!

Here you'll find a list of pregnancy products that I and other pregnant moms found helpful in our pregnancies.

If you're like me, when you first discovered you were pregnant, you craved information about anything and everything related to pregnancy and babies. Most women go right to the Internet, searching for pregnancy websites and forums to give them the needed information. Many others turn to the beloved pregnancy books, which don't require an Internet connection and are available at a moment's notice.

I have grown to love three awesome pregnancy books:

• What to Expect When You're Expecting by Heidi Murkoff
• Your Pregnancy and Childbirth Month to Month by the American College of Gynecologists
• Your Pregnancy Week by Week by Glade Curtis

These books have answered almost all of my pregnancy questions from all three of my pregnancies, plus kept me up to date on what was going on inside of me. They all contain helpful facts, statistics, and illustrations regarding conception, pregnancy, labor and delivery, as well as caring for a newborn.

Of the three, my favorite would have to be What to Expect When You're Expecting. I had both the 3rd and 4th editions. I like that you can get detailed information about each week and month of the pregnancy in a question and answer format in a language that isn't too hard to understand. It gives the book a comfortable feel, as if you are speaking with a friend about your pregnancy ups and downs.

In the beginning of pregnancy, many women are faced with an unwanted, day-long issue: morning sickness. Caused by surging pregnancy hormones, morning sickness is what causes you to feel lightheaded, nauseous, and ill in the morning, noon, and night.

Pregnant women search daily for morning sickness remedies, only to come up with the common remedies offered by their doctors:

• Rise slowly from bed in the morning
• Keep crackers and some water on your nightstand to fill your belly before awakening.
• Always keep your belly full, but not too full.
• Avoid sickening smells, movements, or thoughts.
• Take a prescribed medication to help with the nausea.

A remedy I found while experiencing morning sickness during my second pregnancy is Preggie Pops. These hard candies are specially formulated with natural ingredients and essential oils to help quell the nausea brought on by morning sickness. They come in a lollipop form or a lozenge in a variety of flavors, such as sour raspberry, green apple, sour lemon, and sour tangerine (sour flavors help nausea!).

I would bring Preggie Pop Drops with me to work, and any time I felt a bout of nausea come on, I would let one melt in my mouth. It helped me with the mild morning sickness until I was out of the first trimester. After that, I had one any time I had a bad taste in my mouth (common side effect from pregnancy).

Along with using them for morning sickness, many women use them during labor. When you're in the middle of active labor in the hospital, you are usually not allowed to eat or drink anything other than a few sips of water and some ice chips. If you have some of these Preggie Pop Drops on hand, you can use these during labor to keep your mouth from getting too dry and to give you a little boost in energy.

I bought my packs from Babies R' Us, but they are available online as well on the Three Lollies website, Amazon, and eBay!

One of my favorite pregnancy clothing products is the belly band. It is a stretchy piece of fabric designed for two reasons:

• to keep you in your regular pants longer.
• to cover any skin exposed from shirts that don't quite cover your growing belly.

I was introduced to this item by a sister-in-law, who wore it in her pregnancy. She gave me hers to use, and I instantly fell in love. It was the perfect size and held up my pants, specifically my jeans, longer so that I wouldn't need maternity jeans until the middle of my second trimester. Once I did need maternity jeans, I found that I still needed the band as it helped to keep the maternity jeans up since they tended to slip down.

After pregnancy, belly bands can still be used to cover midriffs when shirts are too short, or they can be used to cover cleavage around your chest if shirts dip too low.

Another maternity must-have is slip-on shoes. Once your belly grows, there isn't going to be much room for you to bend over and reach your laces or straps, plus, it isn't much fun having all of the blood race to your head or to feel the monster leg cramps that come from moving the wrong way.

Having a few pairs of slip on shoes is a must. Here are a few things to consider when buying slip-on shoes:

• Make sure the shoes are slip-on yet also slip resistant. You don't want to have any accidents while waddling around! Look for shoes with a sufficient tread on the bottom.
• Try on shoes before buying them. Don't assume you'll still be the same shoe size as you were pre-pregnancy. The same pregnancy hormones that loosen up your joints also loosen up the ligaments in your feet, making them a bit larger than they were in both width and size.
• Try to buy shoes with a slight heel. A slight heel can help you keep your balance and lessen lower back pain.

Once you hit a certain point in pregnancy when your belly grows and your back aches, you long for something to help you sleep through the nights. You try putting a pillow between your legs, one behind your back, and one under your belly. Is that really comfortable, and does it help all night long?

In comes the pregnancy body pillow. It's one complete pillow, designed to fit the shape of a pregnant woman's body. My friend has one, and she loves that it supports her growing belly and let's her get a good night sleep (when she's not getting up to run to the potty every time the baby moves).

If you're not interested in the whole body pillow, there's a pregnancy sleep wedge that fits beneath your belly to help you sleep. This is what I have, and it supports me without having to have a few pillows or a large pillow around me, making me too warm.

When your belly starts to grow even larger, especially in the second and third trimesters, you're going to feel much more lower back pain, especially when trying to accomplish physical tasks. When I complained about this to my doctor, he recommended a pregnancy support belt.

The support belt that I have comes in three pieces: support belt for the back, a support belt for the belly, and a positioning belt to hold up the belly support. With all three pieces on, much of the extra weight and pressure from the belly is lessened, which helps your lower back tremendously.

I highly recommend a pregnancy support belt for those who are working or who complete housework on a daily basis. Your back will thank you!

A dreaded side effect from pregnancy is getting stretch marks. Stretch marks tend to appear anywhere where you have skin stretching from growth. For some women, stretch marks appear because they grow too fast. For others, it's all in the genes: mother had them, grandmother had them, etc.

Either way, there are two ways to prevent stretch marks during pregnancy:

• Staying hydrated to help keep the skin elastic.
• Gaining weight slowly and steadily.

When those don't work, there are stretch mark creams and remedies to try. A cream that I have tried is Palmer's Massage Cream for Stretch Marks. While it didn't make the stretch marks go away completely, it did help to moisturize my skin and minimize the appearance of the stretch marks.

Many women swear by Bio-Oil, which uses Vitamins A and E plus some essential oils to help minimize and prevent stretch marks.

Towards the middle of pregnancy, some pregnant women choose to find out the gender of their baby. Others choose not to find out the gender, but either way, one of the jobs of a pregnant mother and her partner is to start thinking of baby names.

Sometimes, you have a favorite name in mind. When you can't think of a name, it's nice to have a baby book on hand to do some research and find the perfect baby name.

My favorite baby book is O'Baby: The Irish Baby Naming Book. Since we have a strong Irish last name plus the Irish heritage on both sides, my husband and I enjoy the Irish suggestions, plus the origins and meanings behind the names.

I also like to use baby name apps. The pregnancy app Baby Bump has a nice baby names section in which you can search for popular names or through the origin list for names. You can favorite the ones that you like in a handy list.

All of these pregnancy products helped me greatly in all three of my pregnancies. I hope they can provide you some support during your pregnancy as well!

Best wishes!

©ThePracticalMommy

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